An Irrational Attachment
by Avdal
Summary: Being an devoted stalker is hard work. You can either spend months obsessively tracking their every movement and going through their trash trying to find even the faintest of clues, or you can bide your time and wait for them to epically slip up then grab them in the middle of the night. That works too. Now go get your girl, Kylo, and just try not to screw it up.


If Kylo wasn't certain about it at first, he's absolutely positive now: the Scavenger has to be doing it on purpose.

The little fragments. Tiny pieces of clues. Reflections of her life that she must have left behind to taunt him. For someone as vigilant as she was, as rootless as she was, she would never be so careless otherwise. One or two forgotten keepsakes could have been a casual mistake. This wasn't one or two. What this was, he was certain, was a message meant directly for him.

 _I was here before you. Look all you want to, but you'll never be able to find me._

That's what she was telling him. Gloating to him that he'll always be one step behind her because he's not good enough to keep up.

She couldn't be more wrong. For some reason, she mistakes him for a fool. No doubt all the lies she's being fed by the side that promised to teach her better than he knows he could. She seems to think that it's okay to flaunt at him her new world. What a surprising touch of arrogance that he hadn't expected from her.

Arrogant, and as irresponsible as the path of clues she'd had the conceit to leave behind. The ones that show him as much about who she really is as it does where she might be going next. Combining those with the ever present threads of destiny that tie them together will lead him to her. All he has to do is have patience.

* * *

Patience, unsurprisingly, isn't Kylo's strong suit.

When he'd realized the potential to be found with stalking her, he'd wasted no time in following the trail. That inconsequentially useless "report" he'd ordered had been worse than useless, but it had at least pointed him in the right direction. A starting point that lead him to the most obvious of places to start his pursuit: her old home on Jakku.

He'd been in her head enough to know what to expect. Had seen parts of her former world and how frayed it had left her at the edges. But still… it had been a disarming experience.

Irrationally, he'd expected her to just snap out of that _survive at all costs_ mindset. Because it better fit the image he had made of her in his mind. More closely matched the woman who had rivaled his own hard-earned abilities rather than the weedy and desperate desert rat who had scratched the proof of her existence into a wall that would have one day been buried in the sands along with the rest of her world.

So it's a very disappointing return to the truth when he found her little hoard. The packrat instinct that will probably stay with her for the rest of her life. Empty boxes and packages that she had felt the need to keep even if they were of no use to anyone anymore. They couldn't be sold. Couldn't be repurposed. And yet, she'd kept them anyhow. It was like she was just not quite able to turn off that part of her mind that needed to keep a piece of everything that crossed her path.

He'd sat down on her former bed as he contemplated it, and what a strange thing that was. The way her room had been laid out, that she had taken the _effort_ to lay it out, when all she was really doing was waiting for someone to come back and take her away from it all. And what did that really say about her?

Kylo's eyes open. He hadn't realized that he'd closed them. To anyone watching him, he would have seemed like he was meditating. Meditating oddly in a trash filled room that had once belonged to his enemy.

He takes a closer look then. The tiny bits of memorabilia. Tokens or pieces of paper. Strangely most of which were in odd numbers, hinting at a level of superstition that seems out of place with the rest of her habits.

They leave him guessing blindly at the stories that must be attached to each one. He's already spent an excessive amount of time in this room. Gods only know what the troops think he's doing in here, but who really cares about them anyhow? They're at best disposable and he's got much greater tasks at hand. Like finding the right piece. Anything.

Something overlooked when his men had swept the ship and clumsily tore it apart. It has to be here, but it won't be obvious. Something _subtle_ then...

Maybe he needs to take a different approach to it. What is the odd piece out?

She hadn't locked the doors. Any of them. Or the cabinets, either. On a world such as this one, she'd actually had trust in those around her?

No. Absolutely not. She'd always been as skittish as a feral cat, at least according to the dismally small amount of information he'd been able to gather. And all signs had pointed to her home being broken into in the past. Rough and primitive repairs made to the metal after someone had cut open the walls to get inside.

It clicks in his mind then, as he stares at the welded line tracing along the edges of her doorway. If she didn't lock her house, people would assume there was nothing worse stealing. If they went inside, all they'd see is… junk. They wouldn't know how much each piece, meticulously organized, really actually held an importance.

And now Kylo had been concentrating so hard on getting anything from her through the connection that it actually had worked. He'd caught a new feeling from her. A flash of a warm breeze in the numbing haze that she'd turned their bond into. Sentimentality.

She'd kept all this garbage because she'd felt _sentimental_ towards it. These… pieces of nothing. They'd actually meant something to her.

The Scavenger was driven by compulsion. He can relate to that. The need to establish a routine in your life even when so much of it's path is beyond your own control.

It makes since to him when he thinks about it like that. She's a young girl who feels so lost and overwhelmed. He's felt that much from her through their bond, despite her pulling away from it. Pulling away from him and wrapping herself in the comforts of denial. But small slivers of self doubt leak still through her walls. That creeping sense of uncertainty that works its way into the back of your head no matter how much you try to silence it.

How… interesting. And it proves Kylo's point to a fault: follow the trail. He already feels closer to her just from this bleak little interlude. Maybe all he needs are a few more pieces to add to the puzzle.

* * *

It's becoming much easier for him to reach her.

Now that he knows what to look for, which emotions lead her to leave everything behind for a misguided sense of the 'greater good', he finds that he can latch on to the feeling of their bond so much easier.

He does it all the time. Pulling and searching and feeling his way from his mind to her own. She's so careful, blocking him out entirely, but she's always still there. Wherever _there_ is. No clues yet on her whereabouts, but now as this thing between grows, tiny bits of her emotions flash through to him.

She feels lost. Overwhelmed. But also, for the most part, very happy. It's irritating. Of all the sentiments that the Scavenger feels towards her new life, happiness is the hardest one to bear.

She shouldn't' be happy. _He_ isn't happy. He hasn't been for a long, long time. So it seems only fair that they should be equal in that as well. Instead, he has to do all the effort. He's the one reaching out to find her. Stalking her and neurotically sifting through every little detail he can find. Every small detail that she leaves behind to torment him.

He's the one looking through an ocean of nothingness for a single compass needle to point him to her direction and she isn't pulling her weight.

Fate has seen fit to give them this bond and he's done far more than his share of the effort to protect it. If he had left it to her, she would have abandoned it entirely. Cast their bond aside like an unwanted newborn and left it to die a tragic and miserable death. If it wasn't for his constant practice, pulling their bond closer, using it, growing it, then that may have well happened.

Her negligence makes him very irritated, but it also helps to lead him to the next step. The next clue. She's too busy avoiding him to fully shield herself. Wherever she is, she's very happy right now. Her joy glows through the edges of her fortress. Wherever she is, or whoever she's with, they're making her very-

Oh.

 _Oh._

He knows who she's with now. He'd know that presence anywhere. No, not with his… not Skywalker. The Pilot. You never forget a mind, no matter how much you want to. And the Traitor. Him as well. All three of them are together somewhere and the Scavenger is so nauseatingly delighted that he can hardly stand it.

Apparently... he's been stalking the wrong person. Well, alright then. He's willing to admit his mistakes. Now it's time for a change of direction.

* * *

He hadn't even come close. This time, when he'd narrowed down the search to a specific star system, all three of them were long gone. The starfighter that he'd found had been junked, damaged beyond repair and showing signs of heavy combat before being abandoned.

But she'd been there, though. He was sure of it. She'd even been given her own quarters on the ship, cramped as they were, so that meant she'd most likely been serving as the security. Even if she had barely started her training, the Resistance was confident enough in her abilities to trust her with this task.

Which meant that her 'master' was confident enough in her abilities. Which meant that she was doing well with her training. Well enough to be allowed to pull her own weight and 'fight for the cause' or whatever nonsense they had fed to her to let them use her as a glorified hired gun.

Already? Had her training really progressed so much, so soon?

A waste in every way, but he doesn't dwell on that.

Instead, he inspects the remains of the ship with a level of precision and calmness that was unusual for him. Behind her bed was a storage box. Unlocked, of course. Either she was truly such a creature of habit, or now cocky enough in her strength with the Force to know if anyone had tampered with it. Or maybe, in this new case, she truly did trust those around her.

Kylo doesn't expect to find much in there. And indeed he doesn't.

More pieces of rubbish. Obsessive collected and kept for the sake of familiarity of habit. None of held them of any value to the naked eye, but if you were to look closely enough…

An old ticket stub. From an event in Coruscant. Had she been there? He could have taken her then, if he'd known. On a planet like that, it would have been almost easy to snatch her away if he'd known that's where she had been.

Except that she hadn't been. On that date she had been training. He remembers it very clearly because he had felt her so much more strongly then at any other time before. She's been pulling so hard. Using every ounce of her power to drag the Force inside of herself. Distracted as she was, she hadn't noticed him watching her. Her concentration had been… awe-inspiring. So much potential.

He'd even been able to see her, almost as if he was right there with her. See her surrounded by a field of grass. Ocean spray in the air. He'd wanted to find out more. Make her show him the sky so maybe, _maybe_ , he could find a way to place her. Her mind was open to him then. He should have taken the chance to force his way inside. Do what he knew had to be done.

Instead, he'd reached out. Sent the echo of the movement through to her and watched as her brow tighten with confusion then understanding. A refocusing and honing of her concentration. Then she'd let it all go. All her limitless power and connection to the Force let out in a sharp beam. He'd held his breath. They'd both held their breath.

And the pebbles she'd been trying to move had rattled. Lifting just enough before scattering across the open field.

She'd laughed. Smiling so widely that he couldn't help but skim his lips against the top of her head. Feeling so proud of her at that moment that he'd done it without thinking of the consequences. And she'd looked over her shoulder, beaming and expectant.

Except her master wasn't really there. The old fool she'd been expecting to praise her was nothing but a rapidly disappearing breeze.

Her walls had started to come up again, suspicions rising and overshadowed her joy of success. A burning pressure on his mind and he'd had no choice but to leave before either of them fully realized what he'd done.

* * *

Rey liked high up and faraway places.

It was another thing he'd discovered as time progressed and the bits of herself that he'd found started to add up to something more. He supposed that it made sense. Quite often he used to call her a desert rat, but she really was more like a bird: fast and flighty, gracefully skimming form one perch to the next.

At least that's how he pictured her when he'd stumbled across the latest one of her secret stashes. This time it was on a remote outpost, located on a moon orbiting an uninhabitable molten planet. There was little reason for anyone to ever go to the outpost other than for the obvious: to get supplies for one cause or another but only in the most discrete of ways.

Perhaps this meant he was getting closer. He felt like he _should_ be getting closer. So ready to finally have some results to back and prove to himself that he wasn't wasting his time. Or losing his mind.

Unsurprisingly, this latest search was just yet another a dead end. He'd come to expect that, but there's always more to be found that first meets the eye. Those who chose to talk to him and told him the girl had come by weeks ago. Stayed only one night, picked up a rather uninspiringly dull purchase order, than disappeared. Business as usual to them. Those who chose otherwise revealed little more than Resistance sympathies and a wide range of guesses as to the mysterious girl's true purpose. In a matter of a short few minutes of interrogation, Kylo had heard every conspiracy theory from secret agent to clone to princess in disguise. The latter being almost amusing enough to make it worthwhile to stick around but, no, first and foremost he had a hotel room to search.

Nothing. Nothing at all. It had been weeks and an approximation of cleaning had taken place in the meantime. Unhelpful, but not altogether useless however. Kylo had sat on her bed again. Scooted down lower to where her head would have rested and tried to see the world through her eyes.

Who would let a young girl like that all alone in the world? An emotionless space and ambiguous role. The tiniest of drops in the galaxy. Those sad thoughts had been hers, not his, as she'd laid there. He could feel how restless she was. She wanted to be with her 'friends', but her new duty declared otherwise. He knew that her eyes had kept sliding out the one window of the otherwise featureless room. The skyline of the outpost could hardly even be called that. Clapboarded buildings hastily built up, and the only interesting feature was…

The corner of the emergency ladder hanging outside the building and barely visible from beyond the edge of the window frame. She would have gone there, opened the window and been out and up in an instant. Desperate to escape the cell-like room and curious to explore the new horizon.

It takes Kylo a little more effort. The window itself is much too small and, rather than even attempt to fit through, the more dignified choice was to work his way onto the roof from the stairwell. A locked door and brief flicker of his abilities to knock out the security cameras were all it took and he wondered why she didn't just do the same. Maybe using the Force wasn't second nature to her yet, though that was clearly changing with each day.

He finds the spot immediately. No one else had been up here since and there still were her footprints etched into the grime of the rooftop floor. For _kriffssake_ , what kind of a dive did the Resistance have her staying at?

She must have stood there at the edge. Looking out across the skyline at the fading-

No. She'd stood on the far side. He can almost still make out her fingerprints on the metal railing. She had been watching the dawn. Did she watch it because it reminded her of her old home? A sunrise is a sunrise, and he can picture her standing right there like he is now. Waiting for the first peek of the sun over the distant mountains. She'd been in a rush. She was already late to leave but had been reluctant to go until she'd completed this daily ritual. He can sense her anxiousness. Stubbornness. It's odd how much he can get of her from simply being in the same place at a different time.

He closes his eyes, trying to picture exactly what she'd been doing. How she'd been standing. She'd been cold, but… she was getting used to being cold. Wherever she's been hiding has cool, damp mornings that she hates but also secretly wonders at.

Alright. That narrows the search down. Somewhat. Instead of anywhere in the universe, she could be anywhere in the universe with a planet with a habitable atmosphere, singular sun, and a temperate climate. Tens of thousands or more options, but at least it's a start.

What else?

She'd been thinking about them. Those other two. Of course she was. She seemed to think about them a lot. When he finally catches her, he'll have to find a way to break her of that habit. That need to constantly seek out company. Her misguided and childish ideas of 'companionship'. All that will ever do is weaken her.

It already was, in fact. As she'd been standing there, thinking about them, she'd been worried. Distracted and losing focus on her mission because those two were making her _nervous_.

She'd been thinking about him, too. _Him_. Her bondmate. She stubbornly refused to use that term, and yet there he was. Maybe that's why he could see her reflection so clearly now? Because he had been center stage in her quiet interlude up here as she worried about her friends and doubted about him. Worried that he was out there somewhere, looking for them. Looking for _her_.

Oh Rey, you really have no idea, do you? It had been weeks ago since she'd been here, but they were so connected that he knew without even knowing. Where he had been himself when she was here.

The ship. The ruined starfighter. At the exact moment that she'd been here, he'd been there. Going through her left-behind fragments and thinking about her as she'd been thinking about him. Cyclical reflection and it had to be so much more than a coincidence.

Why had she been afraid, though? Did she sense him as clearly as he could sense her? He doubted it. She'd ran, hid, lied to herself. Done anything and everything to bury their connection. He, on the other hand, had nurtured it. Let their gift grow and it had brought him to this time and place for a very specific reason. He simply has to figure out what it is.

* * *

Sometimes, it's not what he finds, but what he _feels_.

Rey feels envious of her 'friends', even if she doesn't admit it to herself. She's not very good at admitting things to herself, is she?

Regardless, she's with them now and, judging by the thickly masked blanket of resentment he's sensing from her, she's trying to have a good time and not dwell on everything that she thinks she's missing out on.

Duty. Being good. Being of the light. It's ridiculous and.. even she is having a hard time convincing herself of that.

Her enablers aren't helping. They're trying and mostly succeeding at getting her to agree to something. Some sort of grand deception that's making her equal parts both excited and nervous.

And very, very guilty. She's worried what her master will think. Afraid that he'll find out what she secretly has planned.

How… interesting. Perhaps his opportunity may come sooner that he'd hoped.

* * *

All the pieces come together like divine will.

Well, maybe that goes a _little_ too far, but Kylo is so thoroughly delighted with himself that he'll allow the dramatic flair just this once. His grandfather would have probably liked it, so that makes it forgivable.

But no, he's found her! Finally. _Finally_.

Or at least, if you're going to be splitting hairs on the technical, he's found out where she'll be next. That's as good as done.

She's going to be on Coruscant. With them, but they don't matter. It's the first time she's been allowed to leave wherever Skywalker has been keeping her for any reason other than Resistance necessities.

And she's planning on misbehaving quite badly. He always knew that side to her. The side of passion and freedom, and she's planning on exercising both in excess. Her 'friends' have offered to be her chaperones. Skywalker, foolish old man that he is, actually believed them that they were sweeping her away for what they claimed to be a weekend of peace, quiet, and simple wholesomeness.

 _That's_ what she was so nervous about. Afraid that somehow her precious master would know that she's planning on spending more of her time off horizontal than vertical. No, not like _that_. She wouldn't dare. But, judging by the way she's letting those two fools ply her with revoltingly-named firewater concoctions, flat-out unconscious is very much in the cards for their outing together.

Coruscant is a chaotic, non-stop sort of place. She could be going anywhere, and he'd have lost on what might have been his best and only opportunity to take her. Lost it, that is, if he hadn't been so meticulous.

The ticket stub he'd found in the starfighter. A useless piece of paper buried in an equally uninteresting debris heap. And yet, he'd been drawn to it. Had taken it with him and put it in his own, growing collection. There had to have been a reason their Bond had told him _this matters_.

The concert that it's for is performing tonight. Only twice a year, two nights only on Coruscant. She'd kept it as a motivator to be a good student and get the time off. He'd kept it as an arrow.

So now he knew the time and place, but he could hardly just snatch her from the crowd. That would get… messy. And he had a feeling that she would be very cross with him if either of her two pieces of emotional baggage got hurt in the process. Not as if that wasn't inevitable, but she wasn't ready for that part of her training yet.

And she really can't hold her liquor. He knows that for sure from the nauseating and swirling sensation that her side of the bond is emanating. He probably could push his way inside her now. Find out what he'd been looking so hard for so long.

Unnecessary. In a few short hours he won't need to use such brute force. He'll finally have her and everything from there will play out like destiny.

Until then, he has to figure out where Drunk Girl is going to probably literally crash for the night. A cheap motel. Very cheap and very close to the venue. Neither her nor her useless companions intend on doing much more than stumbling the shortest distance to the most uncomfortable of beds.

Time and place? Check.

Cheap nasty dive? Check. The one they'd chosen even has its own wretched hive of a bar attached, for their inhibition lowering convenience.

So what is he missing now? The exact room. Again, barging through every door of the multistory derelict with his lightsaber drawn would certainty get the job done but… again, too messy. He needs Rey to start their next chapter together not completely furious at him.

That leaves her other obsessive routines to help him make the final pinpoint. Something else they share but, in her case, it the high spaces and odd numbers that bring him closer to his goal.

The fifth floor. As close to the roof as she could choose it. In a fleapit like this one, the higher floors are cheaper because most of the patrons are too drunk too stumble up the stairs and prefer the lower floors. In Rey's case, she wants to be near the roof to see her sunrise.

That leaves just one thing left: which room has the unlocked door? The one at the very end, naturally. The farthest away from anyone else, and with an odd number to boot.

Kylo doesn't need to use the Force to know that he's in the right place. All he has to do now is step inside and conceal himself in the shadows. Right now he can feel Rey very close. Downstairs in the bar and the second hand clatter through their bond is starting to give him a headache. She's far, far too drunk to even feel it anymore. Foolish girl. But by the time she wakes up in the morning and starts to regret every misstep that brought her to that point of epic fuckup, it will already be too late.

He knocks out the lights for good measure. Bringing a whole new meaning to 'blackout drunk' as he feels her stumble her way up the stairs. Escorted arm in arm with her two companions.

If she doesn't walk through that door alone, Kylo won't be responsible for his own actions.

She walks in alone.

Half walks, half crawls in, technically. But by this point the anticipation of being in the same room with her is so much that he's willing to forgive her for being so stupid. So reckless and careless and effortless.

With an undignified grunt,s he flops on the bed. Sprawled out and in serious danger of falling off it and not even noticing until the next morning when she would wake up and wonder why she'd thought the stained carpeting was a better alternative.

Then she's out cold. Completely and totally unaware that she's not alone. Really, how can she be so blind? Not that he's complaining, of course, but working on her situational awareness through the Force is going to have to be one of their first lessons together.

He activates his lightsaber. Partly out of want to see her better, and partly to check if she's truly as vulnerable right now as she seems. He'd laid this trap for her, so it's not completely out of the realm of possibility for her to have thought to return the favor.

Not a twitch. Conscious or unconscious or through the Force. She's far to drunk for him to risk checking on her through their Bond.

Instead, he walks right to her. Reaches out to touch her bare arm before remembering that he has his gloves on. He doesn't want to wake her. This should be a peaceful abduction. There will be plenty of time for everything else later.

He consoles himself with stroking the hair out of her face. Sweeping it away and back as he gently wills her to stay asleep. He couldn't have asked for a better outcome. She won't wake up like this until he's ready for her to.

Their bond ripples. He doesn't want to go too near to it, but he knows its pleased with him. All his hard work finally bringing them together again.

Rey makes a strange noise in the back of her throat before falling under his spell. He smiles down at her as the weight of the universe finally leaves his shoulders.

 _And you are set free._

That final thought resonates in such a strange way. Harmonizing with something far too deeply buried within his conscience to be withstood.

So he scoops her up into his arms. Enough time has been wasted already. Tomorrow he can start on changing her mind, he simply has to wait out her inevitable hangover first.

* * *

Author's Note:

Eh. Not my best work but I've been so hard-blocked on writing that I just wanted to get anything done and published. Also wanted to do another Kylo-POV piece, and this explains exactly how he captured Rey at the beginning of Take No Prisoners because that was a plot hole that had been bothering me.

And this fic is loosely set in the ongoing series' timeline just before Take No Prisoners and sometime during-slash-after Human Nature.


End file.
